Jennifer Higdon: For all types of ensembles to discover the truth that newer music brings in younger audiences and creates an exciting event.

Greg Sandow: classical music institutions will have to join our current culture, lose their focus on the past, and become smarter, more challenging, and far more contemporary.

Tom Huizenga: More people should simply get up off the couch, out from behind their computers, disconnect from their smartphones and go out to enjoy a live classical concert.

All of the VIPs agree that the old ways of doing things aren’t working any more, and the standard classical audience is predictably filled with grey-hairs. But we know that American audiences (here in Denver, and throughout the country) want and need art, hence our efforts to bring it.

Ständchen, a song by Schubert sung by Craig Blackard with aerial dance by Liam LeFey and deer puppets by Kate Rinzler. Show design by Mary Lin.

Our first show in Denver, Nuptials for the Dead, took pretty traditional repertoire (Brahms, Schubert, Mahler) and put it in a dreamscape filled with strange bouffons, aerial movement, ballet, pale Edwardian costuming, and even some original arrangements of music by our fabulous music director. Needless to say, a lot of work went into the show, and our audiences got a lot out of it. The same is true for the recent collaboration between Central City, Ballet Nouveau, Colorado Symphony, the Mizel Center, and the Newman Center.

As we continue into our next show, we stay committed to entertaining with thought-provoking, weird, and atypical shows. As companies and audiences, we’re redefining the future of classical music: no more silent concert halls, no more stodgy programming!

Well, the title of our upcoming original opera has a slightly more descriptive title: Queen Victoria’s Floating Garden of Secrets and Natural Wonders. Say that 10 times, fast.

Climate change is one of the major themes Luminous Thread explores in its shows, and as Denver audiences will see, we do it in a fun, farcical, irreverent manner- not your average scare tactic, or boring, preachy, educational drama.

This recent series of photos of an Australian Red Wave could almost be backdrops for Queen Victoria, as we watch a motley group of royalty and pirates combat the environment.

Brett Martin, Perth Weather Live, republished on Huffington Post

Whether these photos are “real” or not, they are certainly theatrical! They remind me of the photoshopped Hurricane Sandy images. Our opera looks at the scary facts of human/environmental interactions through the lens of operatic humor and grandiosity. Opera often presents the most hyperbolic human situations or emotions…but if these photos are real, then our story isn’t that much of an exaggeration. Yikes!